First paragraph:
Contrary to older perceptions presuming political patronage
to be inimical to modern democracy and, for this reason,
ultimately doomed to disappear (for a review, see Roniger,
2004), recent research has accepted that patronage is a
ubiquitous and enduring feature of contemporary politics
(Blondel, 2002; Dalton and Wattenberg, 2001; Katz and Mair,
1995; Kitschelt, 2000; Piattoni, 2001; van Biezen, 2000,
2004; van Biezen and Kopecky´, 2007). Even so, most
researchers still associate patronage politics with
long-established parties that have built close relationships
with their respective states and lack ideological
definition. To such traditional parties, patronage is a
convenient strategy for winning elections through the
selective distribution of public goods. In contrast, new
'parties [that are] founded by outsiders - by
leaders who do not occupy positions within the pre-existing
regime - are compelled to rely upon ideological and solidary
incentives' in order to contest power (Shefter, 1994: 27;
emphasis added). This view is well illustrated by the
experience of the nineteenth-century European socialist
parties, which relied for electoral success on ideological
and programmatic appeals rather than patronagebased
promises. Yet, in reality, not every new, mass-based and
ideological party is patronage-free. When, and under what
conditions, is patronage politics most likely to emerge in
modern parties?

Last Paragraph:
More generally, the preceding analysis contains valuable
lessons for the ever-expanding literature on patronage
politics. It first of all points to the compatibility of
patronage with modern, mass-based and ideological parties;
in such parties, patronage politics may not be antagonistic,
but develop in parallel with programmatic appeals. Secondly,
this analysis suggests instrumentalizing patronage and
approaching it as an intended outcome of intrinsic party
processes. Given that each party is 'a miniature political
system' (Eldersveld, 1964: 1), patronage develops between
the various party subunits over the distribution of
intra-party power. In this sense, patronage is not only more
modern but also more widespread than is commonly assumed.
Finally, this article proposes an explanation of the
development and further dynamics of patronage by looking
precisely at the intra-party power configurations of the
unit under consideration. This last point should not be
missed by researchers involved in the comparative study of
patronage in contemporary politics.